


Baby It’s Time to Pay for My Crime

by musiclily88



Series: Wasted Youth// There Wasn't Much to Waste [28]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, F/F, Gen, M/M, Police, Police Involvement, Psychology, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, and for that i apologize, and this is the aftermath, guys this shit is fucked up, if that hurts you I am also sorry, so like in the last chapter someone literally jumped to his death, this is so fucked up, weird semi-platonic snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:45:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forty-five minutes later found Louis sat hard on the pavement outside the now-abandoned kebab shop, tucked completely into a shock blanket. He waited listlessly for some kind of physical examination and for a police officer to take his statement. He had sent Zayn and Harry home with Liam vaguely chaperoning them, Liam being the least drunk of the three.</p>
<p>He had promised them he would be fine, but he had no idea if he was telling the truth or lying like a criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby It’s Time to Pay for My Crime

**Author's Note:**

> HI MY LOVERS. I've been doing 1. Finals 2. My dissertation 3. Traveling to visit ill relatives 4. OTHER FIC WRITING YAY (I've entered the HL summer fic exchange!) 5. Assorted bullshit like spending time with my girlfriend, ya know how it goes.
> 
> SO
> 
> thus the sorta delay in posting this, although lord knows I've taken longer between chapters fore
> 
> nonetheless, forgive me

Forty-five minutes later found Louis sat hard on the pavement outside the now-abandoned kebab shop, tucked completely into a shock blanket. He waited listlessly for some kind of physical examination and for a police officer to take his statement. He had sent Zayn and Harry home with Liam vaguely chaperoning them, Liam being the least drunk of the three.

He had promised them he would be fine, but he had no idea if he was telling the truth or lying like a criminal.

And so instead he sat under a blanket, wondering if the world really was going to come crashing down around him.

***

Phrases and questions roiled in Louis’ head as he slept well into the next day.

_Did you know him?_

I don’t think so, no.

_You aren’t sure?_

He looks…probably a little different than he did before. But I’m not normally in this part of town or anything.

_What were you doing here?_

Dancing with friends.

_Nearby?_

17 Black.

_What time did you leave?_

Just after last call. Before dawn.

_And you stopped here?_

My friends wanted food.

_Then what happened?_

I stayed outside to smoke, cuz I wasn’t hungry, so I was just standing here waiting, sort of just loitering. Staying out of the way.

_And what did you see?_

Someone was, say, about one-hundred yards away and yelled that I needed to call the police, to call you, because someone was trying to—well, to jump. But before they finished, like talking, he jumped. R-right there. Or fell. Right in front of me.

 

 

**And then, like clockwork, Louis woke up screaming. Every fucking time.**

***

“So, tell me about the nightmares, perhaps?” Dr. Carmichael asked, almost reverently. 

“They started two weeks ago when I saw someone jump off a building and die.”

“Every night?”

“More often than not.”

“Sleeping habits?”

“Terrible.”

“Did you know—this person?”

“No.”

“Are you able to talk about what you saw?”

_crushed bones clotted blood mangled face torn scalp family ripped asunder nothing nothing nothing_

“No.”

“What are the dreams? What happens?”

“He dies. Over and over again, he dies.”

“Can you help make sense of that for me? Every time that happens?”

“I don’t want to die.”

***

And he knew this was a selfish use of someone else’s suicide, particularly of the death of a stranger, but it stuck inside him, deep and cloying. It clawed at him, angry like nothing, _nothing_ he had ever felt before.

He’d given the police his contact information in case they had follow-up questions, although most seemed under the impression is was a clear-cut suicide, rather than murder or an accident.

Returning what he had insisted was a sizeable favour that Louis had done him, Harry camped out in Louis’ bed for an entire week, constructing pillow-forts and singing him nonsense songs. When Louis asked why—and he repeatedly asked Harry why—he simply said he _knew just how bad nightmares could get._

“That’s not encouraging,” Louis muttered, closing his eyes and shoving his sweaty forehead further into his crumpled pillow.

“It wasn’t meant to be encouraging. Just, like, comforting. I know what it’s like, and you definitely don’t have to do it alone. You don’t have to do anything alone.”

“Better than dragging everyone down with me.”

“That’s probably what that guy thought, too.”

“Shit.”

“You’re not like him.”

“I could be.”

“You’re not.”

“He was only twenty-one, had a brother and sister, parents.”

“They told you all that?”

“I asked. He’d just broke up with a girlfriend and failed some kind of coursework, and the story repeats on a loop in my head. Forever.”

“You’re not like him.”

“I’m not far off some days.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“I’m not very nice.”

“You are to me. If you can be nicer to yourself than you currently are, it might be a good start.”

“But what if—the thing is, what if it was an impulsive thing, like, and he’d taken something and hadn’t really thought the whole thing through and regretted it right away but couldn’t take back that last step? What if I do that without thinking?”

“Did he take something?”

“I didn’t—they wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why did you ask? Did you—did you identify with him or something?”

“I’ve come so close to doing something equally as terrible and stupid.”

“You’ve broken onto the roof of a ten-storey building in the early hours just to jump off and terrify a bunch of drunk clubbers?”

“The sarcasm thing does not become you. And anyway, how—”

“I read up on what happened.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“None of us needs to do anything, really, but I read about it because I wanted to know.”

“All right, fine. I asked so many questions about him because I wanted to know whose mangled corpse I was going to see in every single one of my dreams for the next twenty-off years.”

“And did it help? Knowing about him?”

“I think it made it worse. Because on some level, I get it, get why he did it.”

“Just because you get it doesn’t mean you have to have the same outcome, you know.”

“I’d rather leave behind a pretty corpse. Like one with a face and not so many broken limbs.”

“And you say sarcasm doesn’t become _me.”_

“I’m scared, Haz.”

“I know you are. And I know you can’t wrap your head around the fact that it’s not permanent, but it’s not. This isn’t going to be like this forever. He chose his forever. You’re alive and you can always, always change what happens to you down the line. For as long as you stick around.”

***

Louis went to school and turned in his coursework, some of it half-completed, some of it kindly finished for him by Liam. Liam, who stared at him guardedly, nearly constantly, quick to put a comforting hand on Louis’ twitchy shoulder should he need it.

“You don’t need to baby me,” Louis said, tone probably harsher than he had intended it.

“I’m not babying you. I just—wanna know if you’re okay. Well, not _okay,_ but, like.”

“I’m never okay,” he replied with a shrug. “But I’m managing.”

“That—that whole thing was so fucked up.”

“Yeah. King of the understatement, today, it would seem.” He caught his breath. “But really, you don’t have to baby me. You have stuff to focus on, we both do. It’s fine.”

“I’m not going to leave this be.”

“Fine, you can do my maths coursework, fine, you twisted my arm.”

“You’re lucky I’m whipped.”

“Lucky you’re hardworking more like. Can’t stand any delinquency on your watch.”

“Yeah, your first-rate education is all thanks to me, didn’t you know?”

“I’ll thank you in my acceptance speech when I become to bagger at Tesco, shall I?”

“You may not be tall, but you _can_ aim a little higher.”

Louis just smiled and said nothing.

***  
The second week after his abrupt trauma and subsequent persistent night terrors, Louis sat on the floor of his en-suite bathroom, curled up in the fluffy bathmat. He’d propped his laptop on the lid of the toilet, streaming shitty telly and chain-smoking. Sometime near four a.m., he stretched out and clambered to his feet, moving on tiptoe through the dark, silent house that was decidedly too big for its occupants.

He pulled a frozen chocolate bar from his mother’s hidden cache and ate it standing over the kitchen sink. His throat was raw from all the cigs, but he was nonetheless forcefully reminded of numerous sleepless nights from his childhood, numerous nights spent doing this same thing. Particularly when he was anxious about school or other similar bullshit, when he was young enough to still cry himself to sleep at night, he would traipse into his mother’s room (his mother’s room with his stepfather, fine) only to be begged by two tired-eyed adults to please, just _try_ to fall back asleep.

So he would drag his duvet downstairs and prop himself up on a sofa, eating chocolate and watching late-night telly. He had some old infomercials fucking _memorized._

Louis sighed, spitting a bit of chocolate into the sink. His bitterness had started early, latched on like a tick and never relented. And as much as he wanted to let it go, he had no idea how.

Rather than puzzle it out til sunrise, he made himself a cuppa and returned to his room, where he took his medication and eventually fell asleep, cuddling with his retrieved laptop against his chest.

***  
Louis, two days later, decided to feign normalcy and see how that suited. So he offered to take the twins to football practice and he got his hair cut and he did his coursework and he went to the cinema and he swam. Ad nauseum.

And underneath it all was still a tight fist of _empty and evil,_ of unending boredom and no ability to concentrate or bother. Under it all was still a foul-voiced fire-breather telling him he was pathetic.

“Try with every breath to ignore that voice,” Dr. Carmichael offered.

_it’s just so fucking hard_

***  
“Nice to see you putting in an effort, at least,” Zayn said, voice strangely _not_ snide.

“You have no idea when I am or am not putting in an effort,” Louis snapped, twirling a mechanical pencil in one hand and genuinely considering shoving it into Zayn’s neck.

“You’re smiling more.”

“Only cuz Liam has me on suicide watch and it’s freaking me out.”

“Is it helping?”

“What, smiling?” Louis sneered.

“Acting like you care.”

“I keep telling you, I _do_ care. That’s my problem.”

“What is it you care about then?” Zayn asked with a quick roll of his eyes.

“You want to know, kid? You really want to know? Being angry and hating myself for it. All right? Gonna write your psych thesis on me or sommat?”

“No need to snipe.”

“Sniping is my first language, same as you. Don’t sound so offended.”

“You get seven times more offended by anything I say, shit.” Zayn paused, biting at the corner of his lip. “But I do have something to ask you, so don’t get angry for at least, like, ten minutes.”

“Fucking what,” Louis snapped before sighing dramatically. Social interactions were tiresome but no more so, he supposed, than being alone.

“If I offer to take the gun back off you, will you throw a punch?”

Louis audibly swallowed. “Depends on the reason you want it.”

“To get it away from you. That’s it. Honest.”

“File the serial number off and throw it in the sea, it’ll do everyone a load of good.”

“Wouldn’t go that far. Just gonna stick it back in my father’s safe and be done with it.”

“What is this really about? Seriously, get to the fucking point, because I’m sick of everyone treating me with kid gloves and congratulating me on giving a damn and not being dead yet.”

“My response is…Fuck. Can I ask you something selfish?”

“Do you ever say any anything not selfish?”

“Something selfish about _you.”_

“Again, do you ever really—”

“I don’t want to be involved in suicide. Anyone’s, ever. It’s only been, what, two weeks? And look how it’s _fucked you up.”_

Louis sneered. “I thought you said I was _trying_ or some shit.”

“Exactly. If this—if this actually got you to _try,_ it must have really—it must have just—” Zayn fell silent.

“I don’t sleep anymore. Not really. Not that I was ever very good at sleeping or anything regarding healthy living, but anymore I—can’t. Not anymore.”

“What? Why?”

“I just—see it all again and again. In hyper-realistic, high-definition, bone-crushing detail.”

“We didn’t want to leave you there.” It sounded like an excuse.

“I didn’t want you to stay. Harry is underage, you were dumb drunk, and Liam clearly needed to be…elsewhere. Babysitting you or whatever.”

“I got sick in the alleyway, bro, and I barely even _saw_ anything.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yeah. Lucky me.”

“It’s always lucky you, you know,” he said angrily.

Zayn sucked in his cheeks. “Yeah.”

“It’s infuriating. You’re infuriating. Where do you get off, you know? Who gave you the right? What—what am I always doing wrong, or what’s wrong with me?”

“Maybe a chemical imbalance, I dunno. M’not a doctor.”

Louis scrubbed at his wan face. “The meds help a little. _Sleep_ would help a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“I sleep like the damned right now, like every five minutes I’ve got hot coals in my lungs and I can’t fucking do anything but scream.”

Zayn grabbed onto a hank of Louis’ hair and pulled hard. “What helps?”

“Nothing. Just like before. Only now I’m terrified.”

“Of?”

“That I’ll do the same thing.”

“I’m scared of that too.”

Louis sneered again and shook his head. “I swear to god, we’re both so fucking selfish. A man died and all we can think about is how it impacts us.”

“That’s human nature. We didn’t _know_ him, Lou.”

“He just fucked died. Thirty seconds, poof.”

“He _wanted_ to die.”

“No, he just couldn’t think of anything else—better to do. To make it all go away.”

“He wasn’t thinking very hard, then,” Zayn said softly.

“Don’t you fucking lecture me, okay?”

“No lecture. Just, like, a plea.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Just don’t do it, okay.”

“Sounds alarmingly like a lecture.”

“Then you’re not listening closely, are you.”

“Get on with it, so the monotony can set it once you’re done.”

“I just couldn’t deal, okay, if you did. So I’m asking nicely. Please don’t.”

Louis bit his tongue, literally. The tang of blood ran over his next words, sympathetic and quiet though they were. “Okay, fine.”

***

“I’m scared I’ll do something to myself, right, but overtop of everything else, I’m just so fucking angry.”

“Angry?” Dr. Carmichael asked, making a note. “Expand.”

“That he could do that to randomers. To me, just some arsehole standing outside a kebab shop, smoking. He didn’t care that—we’re all left behind with this shit. Or if he did, he didn’t care enough. So because of his stupidity and selfishness, _I’m_ left with nightmares and, what, PTSD?”

“I haven’t diagnosed you with—”

“I know enough about psychology to know the symptoms of PTSD.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“You think I _don’t_ have it?”

“I’m not here to engage in arguments about it, really. There are better uses of our time.”

“Sometimes I think that’s one of the only reasons I stick around. To argue. Be a menace. Make life difficult for everyone else by taking up an enormous amount of resources.” He paused. “I do get a little thrill out of being—angry. Spiteful.”

Dr. Carmichael nodded. “Anger can be sustaining or paralyzing. It does seem to boost you, somehow, especially when you talk about your fath—”

“Stepfather.”

“Yes. When you say you try to spite him, are any of these actions constructive at all?”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

***  
Louis floated languidly on his back, hands ghosting over the surface of the tepid pool. He stared at the high ceiling—even their _basement_ had a high ceiling. His ankle ached from its prior break, and he told himself he was getting old. Down to the marrow in his bones, he felt old, even though he knew this was a pretentious, preposterous way to feel.

“I am not an old man,” he said aloud. The room did not answer back, and neither did the water except for a gurgle near the filter. “I’m not,” he insisted to himself quietly. And yet he felt a weary ache at each of his joints, perhaps borne of his inability to sleep, his penchant for fighting wars in his sleep. Even the room-temperature water barely soothed.

Was this what life was to be like? So wholly—unsatisfying, even the luxuries? How bleak.

Handy thing that the monotony was so frequently broken up by brutal, screaming nightmares.

***

“Maybe you should be hospitalized,” Lottie remarked idly as they picked their way through the (frankly atrocious) crop-top selection at TopShop. History was repeating itself with a vengeance, and the eighties hated Louis.

“Christ, are you really buying that? There’s barely any material there, you might as well just steal it and save the forty quid.”

“I’m trying not to do that anymore, jeeze.”

“You shoplift?” he muttered, eyebrows shooting up beneath his fringe.

“I’m a depressed white girl. Of course I shoplift. Now stop trying to change the subject. Have you considered going to hospital?”

“I don’t want to go to hospital.”

“But maybe you should.”

“Shove off. Look, we’re all proud of you for your remarkable journey and all, but I won’t be hospitalized.”

“The night screams are wearing a bit thin, bro.”

“You could come check on me, little sis, if all my pesky screaming _wakes you_ up.”

“Your door is always locked, you gash.”

Louis grimaced. “Old habits. Mum’s come in whingeing and moaning early in the morning, way too many times for my taste.”

“Caught your morning wank, more likely.”

“You’re telling me she _hasn’t_ stormed into your room in tears, insisting that you’re throwing your life away moment by moment?”

“…No.”

“Guess I’m the favourite then.”

“Being the oldest must suck.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Well, a little tea and sympathy, then.”

“Buy me a scone, too, yeah?”

“Shit. Yeah, fine. Only because I have a favour, a question to ask,” she replied brightly, bundling up her items to head to the till.

He rolled his eyes but followed her, waiting as she paid for and received her purchases. Then they walked to a nearby bakery, solely because Louis had demanded scones.

“I’d have preferred a coffee shop.”

“Coffee’s disgusting. It stunts your growth.”

“You’re a prig.”

“Hush and drink your tea.”

She flicked her blonde fringe out of her eyes. “So. My question.”

“Fire away.”

“So, like. Being in love. Is it supposed to be this blatantly terrifying?”

Louis threw his head back and laughed, loudly, once. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” he said brightly.

“Huh?”

“Always getting asked about love and never being in it.”

It was Lottie’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, right, like you don’t love him. Like you’re not in love with him.”

“Who?”

She smirked. “Yeah, right. Like I’d say that. It’d literally ensure you sabotage any chance whatsoever of a happy ending, you utter cock.”

“What the fuck?” he said with a sneer.

“Figure it out for yourself or be miserable until the end of your days, bro. No skin off my nose now that I’ve had the chat.”

“You’ve helped me not one whit!”

“Haven’t I?” she asked, quirking one eyebrow.

_“No.”_

Rather than answer, she merely smiled.

“Well, the trick’s on you, then, kiddo, because I have no idea how to help you either.

This, at least, elicited a frown.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: musiclily


End file.
